In an apparatus of this type known from German Patent 3,010,923, bars compiled in groups by means of stops are fed successively on a sloping plane to the transfer device which feeds the groups of bars lying vertically above one another on a roller runway to a downstream tying device for tying off the group and to a bending machine, in which the group is bent into the desired shape. The main disadvantage of this apparatus consists in the fact that the groups of bars are passed without guiding to the transfer device. The transfer device has a plurality of rows of vertically disposed pairs of rollers; this can lead to malfunctions and misalignment of the bars. It is additionally disadvantageous in the known design that the groups of bars firstly have to be wrapped with tapes or wire or bonded to one another by welding so that they can subsequently be fed to the bending device in the longitudinal direction.
German Patent 3,644,482 discloses an apparatus for processing steel bars, having a tool, e.g. a bending slide, in which apparatus in each case a plurality of bars is transported both towards the bending slide and, after processing, away from the slide transversely to the longitudinal direction by means of arms which are mounted on both sides of the tool and can be swivelled as a unit. In this construction, the bars must be placed manually on the swivel arms. It is furthermore disadvantageous that the bars are not fixed on the swivel arms and, during swivelling of the arms, are held only by one step in the respective swivel arm. A further disadvantage emerges in the fact that the bars to be bent are placed on inclined, ramp-shaped elements and, after the lowering of the swivel arms, slide into an operating channel of the bending device only due to the force of gravity transversely to the longitudinal direction In this process, as a result of the simultaneous feeding of a plurality of bars, a mutual hindrance can take place during sliding, in particular if the bars are long and ribbed, thereby making a defined, orderly arrangement in the operating channel more difficult.